The Pink Lady of the Grove Park Inn

Our family was in Asheville this past weekend for a lacrosse tournament, and though we didn't actually stay there, we visited the Grove Park Inn on Saturday night just to walk around a bit. The kids had never really been to it, so they just enjoyed the ambiance of the place. It is a majestic place; it feels like how the Titanic must have felt before, well, you know.

As we walked around and marveled at the giant fireplaces and stonework, I mentioned to the kids about infamous "Pink Lady," the ghost who is said to "live" in one of the rooms of the Grove Park Inn. Needless to say, they were intrigued --  and a little spooked.

Fast forward to Monday, when a fairly innocuous tweet about it led to a conversation with Jen (aka @Hattiechicken). Turns out, she was at the Grove Park last week ... and even stayed in room 545!  Here were her comments about her, uh, experiences in the room:

We had 3 weird things happen. I was alone the 1st 2 nights. Talking to @MBERaleigh on the phone, opened the very heavy blinds opened the windows. Walked around the room getting ready for my conference. Turn back to the windows. Blinds are completely closed. 

...

@MBERaleigh arrives Friday. Closes the windows. ... Locks them -- they have these thumb screws u have to turn to get them to stay open. We go out. Come back & windows are wide open. Thumb screws turned. Asked staff, they didn't do it.

...

The staff has all kinds of stories. I was told the window being open was a compliment bc I wanted them open, so she opened them.

Jen also said that at one point her room key went missing, they searched all over, and five minutes later it was sitting on the desk.

Discussing the Pink Lady reminded Charity and me about the time we stayed at the Lake Lure Inn about 14 or 15 years ago. It was off-season, so it was very quiet and desolate. At one point during the night, I woke up to see what looked like a small boy tip-toeing around the food of our bed. Then he was gone.

Now, to be completely honest, it could have had something to do with the news clippings at the hotel's front desk that chronicled the haunted inn that played with my minds. In addition, both the Grove Park and the Lake Lure Inn are from an era that makes them, well, "Shining-esque."

As mentioned before, I've long been intrigued by N.C.'s plethora of ghost stories. Just as varied the state is geographically, so is the variety in supernatural ... things. From the mountains to the coast and everywhere in between, there are creepies and spooks and things that go bump in the night. But, I gotta say that, to me, at least, the mountains have the best ghost stories. (Heck, according to this site, 5 of the 7 top haunted hotels in the state are in the mountains.) The Pink Lady and the Brown Mountain Lights alone may take the cake. (And not far from the Grove Park Inn is Biltmore Estate -- one can imagine that place has some stories, too!)  But there is also Helen's Bridge in Asheville, several spots at WCU, the demon dog of Vale Crucis, and many more.


And though not a ghost story per se, it's hard to be the mystery and intrigue of the Ferry Crosses of western N.C.

What are your favorite N.C. ghost stories?

AP: Mysterious orbs confound NC county for decades

If you've read this blog before, you know we are HUGE fans of North Carolina's many ghost stories. One of my all-time faves is the Brown Mountain Lights. Well, the Associated Press recently tackled this age-old legend.

Two orange orbs, just about 10 feet off the ground, floated past Steve Woody and his father as they hunted deer more than 50 years ago. The mysterious lights passed them, then dropped down the side of a gorge in the Blue Ridge foothills.

For at least a century, the Brown Mountain Lights have confounded residents and tourists in a rugged patch of Burke County, bobbing and weaving near a modest peak. Are they reflections from automobile headlights? Brush fires? A paranormal phenomenon, or something natural not yet explained by science?

"I didn't feel anything spooky or look around for Martians or anything like that," Woody said. "It was just a unique situation. It's just as vivid now as when I was 12 years old."

Whatever the explanation, tourism officials are hoping all those decades of unanswered questions add up to a boost in visitors making their way to scenic outlooks around Linville Gorge with the goal of spotting something mysterious.

Unexplained mysteries like the Brown Mountain Lights have been the subject of cable TV documentaries and have fueled vast online communities of amateur investigators. Ed Phillips, Burke County's tourism director, is hoping to capitalize on that.

Earlier this month, a sellout crowd of 120 paid $20 a head to attend a symposium on the lights at Morganton City Hall, and there was a crowd outside the door hoping to get in at the last minute.

"It's a good problem to have," Phillips said. "I could have sold 500 tickets."

...

The Brown Mountain Lights have drawn serious scientific interest since the 1920s, when the U.S. Geological Survey issued a report concluding the lights were reflections from automobiles, trains and brush fires.

Daniel Caton, a professor in the physics and astronomy department at Appalachian State University, thinks that's part of the explanation for what people have reported seeing over the years. But Caton thinks there's more to the lights, at least in some cases.

Caton said that about seven years ago, he was ready to give up studying the lights when he began hearing from people who said they saw them from mere feet away, not miles across the Linville Gorge. Those accounts sounded to Caton a lot like firsthand reports of ball lightning, a little-understood but naturally occurring phenomenon involving luminous spheres often said to move or bounce about in the air.